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Women and the perpetuation of female genital mutilation — 35 Comments

  1. The appeal of Islam refers directly to Islamists, not others. Islamists don’t convert once in Europe because they want to maintain their control of their women.

  2. I’m not so sure the appeal of Islam is so rooted in the desire to control women. The multiculturalist left tries so hard to pretend that never really happens, rather than making it one of their selling points of the religion.

    No, they give their support to Islam in spite of its subjugation of women, not because of it. They have their eyes permanently fixed on a far bigger promise that makes the nastier features of Islam a price they’re willing to pay to achieve their larger goal.

    They realize that they can’t make an omelette without breaking some eggs. They don’t yet realize, and won’t until after the eggs are all broken, that they aren’t going to make an omelette either. Just a giant mess that will take centuries to clean up.

  3. Sexism is like allergies in your immune system. It is only bad if you are allergic to harmless things. Since men in Western civilizations, are not a danger, attacking them is sexist and wrong. Since men in Islamic and tribal cultures are a danger, sexism is a good thing.

    The Theory of Relative Gains. Or marginal costs, whatever.

    I don’t exactly have a problem with sexism if it is useful. I wonder if Dean, does.

  4. Sally, you and Neo-neocon have obviously never seen the full Esmay. When it comes to victimization, nobody is a bigger victim than white males, especially when put up against those horrid feminists and misandrists and man-hating women that he lves to slander.

    He cherry-picks data that agrees with his argument, slams all datat that disagrees as biased, and counts on iFeminists a WHOLE lot.

    Trust me when I say: You’re better off never again responding to one of his anti-women trolls.

  5. Dean Esmay: I love how some people are quick to blame the men and hold the women blameless.

    This isn’t and wasn’t the point, of either neo’s post or Dr. Sanity’s. The point of the latter’s was to connect the cultural practice of mutilating female genitals as a means of suppressing female sexuality with a general fear of that sexuality — on the part of both men and women (though for different reasons) — that pervades the muslim world. An example of that fear is this quote from the interview that occasioned the Dr. Sanity post:
    Dr. Muhammad Wahdan: We have a spinster problem in the Arab world, and the last thing we want is for them to be sexually aroused. Circumcision of the girls who need it makes them chaste, dignified, and pure.

    Yes, this sort of mutilation occurs in other cultures than Islamic ones, and predates Islam. But again, that’s not the point. The point is that such a practice is entirely of a piece with so many other examples of extreme and often vicious sexual repression that are found in so many, and through so much of, contemporary Islamic societies. This repression is usually perpetrated, actively or passively, by both sexes, but the bulk of its focus is on women — who, in many Islamic nations, must cover their hair in public, or cover their entire face and body, who cannot appear alone in public, cannot drive or vote, who can be stoned, by Islamic law, for “adultery”, and who can be murdered, as in “honor killings”, for speaking to male strangers.

    Yes, I know: honor killings, like genital mutilation, occur in other cultures as well; and this culture too has examples or supporters of sexual repression, the weight of which commonly falls more heavily on women. But the point is to take off the PC, multi-culti, pomo blinkers that require us not to look at or acknowledge the horrors that occur in other cultures, lest that distract us from the happy-face “diversity” mantras that currently pervade our own.

  6. I love how some people are quick to blame the men and hold the women blameless. It shows a great deal of ignorance, not to mention sexism. In Muslim societies men have all sorts of obligations and duties to women. It’s not all simply about men having the ower. And I love, just LOVE, the idea that if one women cuts off another woman’s pudenda, it’s the man of the household’s fault. What sexist, demeaning crap.

    As for “honor killings,” just read When She Was Bad: How And Why Women Get Away With Murder, where you’ll learn amongst other things that most honor killings are perpetrated at the instigation of a man’s wife or mother withint he household, i.e. his mother says, ‘your wife has dishonored us, kill her’ or his wife says, ‘our daughter has dishonored us, kill her.’ Now that’s another brutal reality, just as the brutal reality is that in these cases of female genital mutilation it is the women who perpetrate and continue this tradition, just like many other family traditions; you can damn well bet that most men would rather not even discuss the subject, they probably find it scary and weird (and if they knew anything about sex they’d know it makes the sex lousy for them too).

    By the way, as for male circumcision: it is clearly nowhere near as awful, however, the notion that it’s for cleanliness has long been debunked, as is the antiquated, medieval notion that the foreskin is “just a flap of skin.” No, it isn’t. See Dr. John Taylor’s ridged band site for extremely detailed information on the erogenous tissue that is sliced away, including by the way some of the nervous tissue that controls orgasm–premature ejaculation is one of the negative symptoms of a circumcized penis (and yes, you’ll find the peer reviewed papers from scientific journals to back that up, it is not “propaganda.”)

    You may also want to see Jews Against Circumcision for more info on this. A short bit of information being that the “circumcision” practiced by Abraham and all Jews until well after the Roman occupation snipped only the very tip of the foreskin off, not the entire thing. The practice of taking the whole thing, and diminishing the sexual performance as a result, is a much more recent innovation.

    If you did this to your kid you made a mistake–a forgivable one. I would encourage you not to repeat it, to educate yourself and others about it.

    And by the way, yes, you can restore your foreskin, and get SOME of the functionality back, although some of the nervous tissue can never be restored. Just type “foreskin restoration” into your search engine. The one thing I strongly recommend is avoid the surgical restorations. Those are a bad idea.

  7. If I had as much power as the islamics do, I don’t think I’d let a woman control how many heart beats she has in a day, let alone customs.

    The primary appeal of Islam is the power men have over women.

    The tribal culture of Darfur and Africa, ain’t exactly all that different from Islam’s culture. Afghanistan and Iraq, are actually “tribal” cultures, you know. It’s like Italian mafia on steroids. Big, bad, and metastasized.

  8. Steve: my point was that women control their own customs, and who knows why they follow these customs.

    Yeah, those crazy women, huh?

    In fact, of course, women as such no more control “their” own customs than men do — members of both genders are immersed in cultures that transmit values and practices in a variety of ways. They can be — and in this case they certainly should be — changed, but to do that it helps to have some comprehension of what it was that gave rise to, and maintains, the practice in the first place. With female genital mutilation, it’s fairly obviously a fear of female sexuality — a fear that we can see exemplified by Steve’s choice of what he considered to be a relevant news item.

  9. And I went out of my way to dissociate the comparison between you and a loony “progressive,” Steve. Rather, I attacked the clearly postmodernist groupthink that clearly underlies both practices (or at least became clear when I made fun of progressives and you started flapping and squawking).


  10. I concur. In fact, Steve, I would go so far as to say the looney “progressive” thinking, that equates FGM with the western practice of wearing makeup, is an impassable bar to progress, not just for the third world, but for the entire world.

    Yawn. I went out of my way to dissociate the comparison: my point was that women control their own customs, and who knows why they follow these customs. I specifically did not equate FGM and makeup, but rather the feminine groupthink that clearly underlies both practices.

    But then, drive-bys rarely look carefully at what they’re shooting at.

  11. “And that’s part of the reason why it will be hard to abolish.”

    I concur. In fact, Steve, I would go so far as to say the looney “progressive” thinking, that equates FGM with the western practice of wearing makeup, is an impassable bar to progress, not just for the third world, but for the entire world.

  12. I didn’t realize circumcision was passe. So is there any way I can…you know…get it back?

    As to FGM – I think it should be dealt with like suttee was in India. Oops, I forgot – no colonial government to impose our evil Western cultural standards on the helpless aboriginal peoples. Guess we’ll have to rely on the NGOs and all their powers of persuasion, then. Too bad for all those girls who’ll have to wait…

  13. We were talking about sexual control:


    Routine infant circumcision in the United States grew out of a widespread fear that masturbation caused various diseases, a view now universally rejected by the medical community. Circumcision was thought to reduce masturbation and other sexual behavior considered undesirable. Circumcision, depending on how it is practiced, can have a significant impact on masturbation; see masturbation for a detailed discussion.

    I don’t know if it’s propaganda or not. I was done (for hygiene, I suppose), neither of my sons were. There were no problems there, either. I recall that a few years ago, Jamie Glazov, who sells himself as a Russian, an American, a Black man, and a Jew, wrote several articles for Frontpage.com telling you everything you didn’t want to know about his intact foreskin. Whatever.

    My point is not to equate the two types of cutting. Just suggesting that a cloud of superstition, not necessarily something as simplistic as “evil men controlling women”, is involved.

  14. I’ll go back and read the comments later, but with respect to behavior, isn’t it a bit of a “truism” that you don’t need to change anyone’s mind. If you have the power to change the behavior, the mind will likely follow?

  15. Somehow I am reminded of the old blame-the-victim scenario still used in rape cases. Some people are just plain jackasses. Of course women are doing the deed – muslim men aren’t supposed to be touching female genitals, except for their wives, now are they? Remember the taliban and how women couldn’t even be seen by male doctors? DUH!! What a jackass – as if the men don’t condone and enforce this – as if it would still be happening if muslim men opposed it. Let’s see, hmmm, men do the honor killings, as well as control the economy,most property and jobs, religion, politics, police and military and the courts, but have no part to play in clitorectomy. Is that how it works? Dumb me! I thought most female muslims were mere property and breeders.

  16. An important and thought-provoking post, Neo. Many thanks… and thanks also for demonstrating something the UN is actually good for!

    respectfully (if ungrammatically),
    Daniel in Brookline

  17. “Who comes first, women or men, in…this endeavor?”

    At the risk of stating the obvious, I’d say the women don’t come at all. The horror!

  18. It might seem simplistic, but this to me is another instance of “I have a teaspoon…”

    There are no “overnight cures” for cultural practices. No matter how repulsive a practice might be, it is not “something new”. It has been part of that society for probably hundreds of generations.

    The practice of female circumcision is one which many agencies have been working to counter for as long as I have been aware that it existed. Those agencies include the likes of Red Cross, Save the Children Fund, Oxfam…

    Please, if ever cultural change is being discussed or considered, can people leave out the arrogant “our way is the best way – send in the missionaries”. It frequently is not.

    A far better means may well be to find a reputable charity working for the improvement of womens’ rights in those areas where circumcision is practiced – and make a donation!!

  19. “but what about other groups? If there’s a “masculine power” element to female circumcision, then what’s the element with doing it to guys? Not trying to start a fight, I am generally curious. To say the one type of cutting is hygienic, while the other is not, is not convincing to me.”
    Well, other than the word circumcision, and the fact that both procedures are performed on the genital region, there’s little if any functional comparison. In male circumcision, despite the anti-circumcision propagandists, the excess foreskin is removed. Big deal. there appears to be relatively little pain during the procedure, and no long term side-effects. I watched the procedure performed on my son (clinical, not religious), and he cried, but it wasn’t that bad. Honestly, if you aren’t Jewish, I guess the main reason is to look like Daddy… It’s really a cosmetic procedure, with some small hygiene benefit. There’s almost zero chance of mistake by the Dr. since they use a little guide that clamps on the penis. Compare this to some village in Northern Africa, with an woman with no formal training performing a cliterodectomy with some contaminated ceremonial dagger. That’s a removal of the clitoris- roughly comperable to cutting off the head of the penis on a man. I don’t think the two compare, and in fact think the term ‘female circumcision’ should not be used as it is rather misleading.

    What I don’t understand is why it hasn’t been eliminated in the muslim world already- It seems if you just educated them that it’s really an animist practice, they’d condemn it in a heartbeat, no?

    As for the animist practitioners, perhaps missionaries are the best weapon against this practice?

  20. I wouldn’t call this an argument in favor of female circumcision but I would consider it a refutation of any argument that suggests that Muslims are somehow more obsessed with sex than we are. I mean, the first couple of times, it was kind of amusing. But we seem to be having an epidemic in this area.


  21. It’s also my understanding that male circumcision is more sanitary. And in this country almost always done at birth.

    That was the pretext under which it was done for decades in the US, rather less now, as I understand it. And it was/is done at birth. The Jewish practice is done by a special priest (mohel) on I think the seventh day.

    I don’t know about other groups, I do know it is done here and there in the same regions where female circumcision is done. In Europe it is rarely done.

    The cleanliness/health issues have been exaggerated, so, again, what exactly is the logic of male circumcision? What I mean is: I understand the Jewish approach, it’s in the Bible, but what about other groups? If there’s a “masculine power” element to female circumcision, then what’s the element with doing it to guys? Not trying to start a fight, I am generally curious. To say the one type of cutting is hygienic, while the other is not, is not convincing to me.

  22. It’s also my understanding that male circumcision is more sanitary. And in this country almost always done at birth.


  23. Anything else is a pathetic projection of men’s fear of woman’s power.

    And the purpose of male circumcision? (esp. bearing mind that in these same countries boys have their foreskins removed in the their teens) What’s that all about?

  24. Who but a human would ever think of such an idiotic practice? Leave the girls alone. Let nature take its course. Anything else is a pathetic projection of men’s fear of woman’s power.

  25. Steve said:
    “Men just are whatever they are”

    There is, in fact, a lot of competition and stress and risk in getting status, mates, wealth and all that. In the human species, and in Western society, men are not drones that just mate and die.

    But I wanted to ask another deeper question about FGM: Why are their similar societies where it is not practiced. Shame/honor societies certainly exist in Asia and Latin America.

  26. IIRC, the way that foot-binding was eventually eradicated involved setting up networks of families who swore that they would not bind their daughters’ feet *or* (and here is the key) allow their sons to marry daughters with bound feet. In addition to making a public statement against foot-binding, this served the very practical purpose of ensuring that girls without bound feet would have potential marriage partners (the sons of other women in the network), thus addressing the fear that a woman without bound feet would be unable to find a husband.

    I seem to recall hearing that there was talk of similar networks being formed to combat female genital mutilation, but I can’t think where at the moment.

    Great post on a very weighty subject, neoneo!

  27. Ymarkasar said, “Guerrila partisans are some of the best propagandists and hit-run operators around.” I hope you weren’t including this particular anonymous in this group. A good propagandist, or “hit-run operator” if you want to call it that, would make some sort of effective argument before “fading back into the hedgerows.” Nothing about the foolish and obvious incorrectness of anonymous’ comment would be effective to influence anyone’s thinking — except to persuade us that anonymous, whomever he or she may be, isn’t any too bright.

  28. “You show absolutely no data to base this on, especially re: Islam.”

    It’s logic, not data. While it is true that logic can be manipulated, it is pretty obvious when it happens. It is not so obvious when data is manipulated however.

    I really am getting very tired of people–quite a few of whom are named “anonymous,” as it turns out–not fully reading what I have written, and yet commenting anyway (and often rudely, at that).

    Guerrila partisan warfare has always emphasized the hit and run. Then they fade back in the hedgerows, and you can’t find them anymore.

    Guerrila partisans are some of the best propagandists and hit-run operators around. Somehow, we got to steal them from the socialists.

  29. Anonymous: have you mastered the technique of following a link? If so, please follow the link right before the quote of mine that you have reproduced, and see what it is I’m referring to.

    And I make it quite clear that the practice has no real causative ties to Islam; it is a geographical connection, and a spotty one, at best.

    I really am getting very tired of people–quite a few of whom are named “anonymous,” as it turns out–not fully reading what I have written, and yet commenting anyway (and often rudely, at that).

  30. I went back and read Dr Sanity, I would characterize her article as going something like this: She doesn’t like Arabs, who generally are Muslims, she is looking for reasons to justify her dislike, she came upon the subject of female circumcision, and basically vented in that direction. Whatever logic or accuracy it might have contained was overridden by a manifest bias against Arabs. Whatever. It’s her blog.

    I found Dean Esmay’s post, on the other hand, an attempt to correct the errors of fact in Dr Sanity’s post while at the same time striking a much more balanced position.

    Meanwhile, as a typical Westerner I find the practice of female cutting abominable and I am glad that there are educational methods out there trying to get rid of it. Outlawing it, however, by force, would just drive it underground.

    As to why these things happen. Bearing in mind that apples are apples, and oranges are oranges, one could, with some hyperbole, point to all kinds of practices that Western women indulge in, including this mindless obsession with weight, makeup, hair, and clothes, that is directed, encouraged, and policed by women, and which really doesn’t involve men at all, beyond the fact that men in general want women to be “good looking” or “sexy” or such like.

    I mean — not to go too far afield — why is it that men just are whatever they are but a woman has to feel an obligation to spend a good amount of her time and her money to “look good”, and usually for some guy who doesn’t really notice all the work involved?

    I would submit that, although female cutting is incomparably gross, it follows the same line of reasoning: sexual status.

    And that’s part of the reason why it will be hard to abolish. In these societies that practice female cutting, not getting cut would be to be like a woman in our society who, in previous Western incarnations, would be considered a slut, or a witch, etc., etc.

  31. but the more extreme (and more common) forms are most certainly not

    i call BS.
    You show absolutely no data to base this on, especially re: Islam.

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